A finalist in three different categories, also including Employer of Choice, Allens came out on top to win the Aon Hewitt Employer of the Decade Award, beating Anglican Care, Atlassian and Main Roads Western Australia.
Well there you have it. Working at Allens: officially better than shoveling bitumen on a road. With such stiff competition as a country retirement home and road works department, how can one possibly fail to be convinced? But we suspect that the firm didn’t include the following in its award dossier:
- the firm pays consistently below market salaries
- the firm cancelled its Christmas party, citing “client sensitivity” concerns
- the firm projected that 93.5% of the number of 2008/2009 lawyers would bring in 110% of 2008/2009 revenue
- the firm instigated one of the longest pay freezes, despite soaring revenue
- lawyer morale has been sliding in the wake of redundancies and office closures
- the firm ditched the tea ladies
Our spy commented:
I guess if your employer doesn’t think you have a right to play cricket on weekends, and “voluntarily” makes you redundant, and … and … then yeah, they’re great. I particularly liked the bit from the HR manager that “whenever we do anything, we do it at a level that is beyond excellent”. Vomit.
Beyond vomit indeed. She went on, apparently: “”There’s a real practice in the organisation around doing things really, really well and it runs through the whole organisation – so you feel privileged to work there.” I wonder if this guy also feels privileged, assuming he’s still there:
REALLY frustrated about pay review – I regularly bill at 135% of my billable target, work crazy hours and weekends for an extra $5000?!? I had been holding out for ‘better’ times with a firm I previously felt loyal to – but with all the cutbacks, additional enforced christmas leave time, lack of any form of morale boost and now the poor pay increase, I’m very flat and disenchanted.
But what’s this about no cricket on weekends? Tell us more.
And say, this couldn’t possibly be the same Aon Hewitt that counts Allens as a recruitment client, could it? Oh, wait…
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The no cricket comment was a reference to Managing Partner Tom Poulton, who in 2005 came out with this mantra on work life balance:
‘”We expect our people to treat the client as if they were God and to put themselves out for clients. You don’t say, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it, I’m playing cricket on the weekend’ … You don’t have a right to any free time.”
This apparently is not inconsistent with being the employer of the decade…
Work-life balance is when work = life.
This is astonishing. Having worked at Allens (and another large firm), I don’t really think it’s too different to any other big law firm I have come across in the way it behaves towards its staff which seems to be of the “I had to go through this treatment to make it to where I am, therefore so do you” ilk.
When compared with other employers in other sectors (or even some of the more compassionate, smaller firms where staff actually do get to have a life), this just whiffs of some made up award with no real credit. Perhaps they should actually survey the staff to see whether their employer should be given such a lofty title, rather than reviewing a number of unused incentives which, if implemented, would be excellent but, as everyone knows, flexible working, additional leave etc. is only as good as the management who allow you to apply for such things. How can you take additional leave when you have billable hours to make up for or intend to apply for partnership in the next couple of years?
I don’t think Allens is a bad place to work if you like long hours, little job satisfaction, disappointing pay and almost no thanks (certain partners firmly excluded from above sweeping statement) but, as such, it is really no different from the other larger firms, in my view. To call it an employer of the decade is, however, clearly wrong. It’s a bit like calling a hotel 5* because, on paper, it has a lift, pool and 24-hour concierge but, in reality, all the paint is falling off the walls and the lift doesn’t actually work. And there’s a floater in the pool.
My two cents.
Floater in the pool … I lol’d
So a firm that allegedly forces people to take redundancies, deliberately freezes people out so that they feel like they need to quit, reduces people’s performance ratings so that partners can retain their big bonuses and beach houses, “encourages” people to come back from their o/s secondments early less they take a pay cut and cancels the Xmas party to save a miserly sum is employer of the decade? Hopefully the award can be extended to other firms – like enron or Lehmann brothers as best in house accounting teams, or the labor party as best workplace for queenslanders called Kevin…
Can’t beat that floater in the pool!
Floater in your 5 star pool. Great analogy. LOL.
Employer of the decade! I had a good laugh.